A new toy is awaiting me at home today. I finally broke down and got a digital SLR camera. I went for the Canon Rebel 10mb XTI with a lens that costs twice as much, the EF-S 17-55mm. I am also getting a flash for it, but I am still hesitant to get the 580ex since the 430ex seems to fulfill the needs of a non professional photographer, it’s cheaper and lighter. But hey, what do I know, I’m the newbie here. Any suggestions are welcome. But not matter which I choose, I plan to get Gary Fong’s fantastic Lightsphere diffuser. I will post some pics as soon as I take some.

Link: Canon EF-S 17-55mm f/2.8 IS USM at Amazon
Link: Canon Digital Rebel XTi at Amazon
Link: Canon 430EX Speedlight flash at Amazon
Link: Lightsphere II at Amazon

I live in New York and space here is a commodity. I keep trying to make the most of our kitchen which is very small. I’ve never been a fan of pot racks because they are usually so bulky, until I saw this minimalist beauty. And I had to get one, of course. After some trimming on the sides I was able to install it on my kitchen window. Hopefully it will stay put since our window top border is not very thick.

Link: Buy from Amazon.com

Two days ago Time Magazine was finally modernized by the a redesign developed by Pentagram‘s Luke Hayman with TIME managing editor Richard Stengel and art director Arthur Hochstein. And I’m not when their website got redesigned, but it looks just as nice as it’s print counterpart.

Link: Pentagram’s Post

Link: cirquedusoleil.com

I’ve enjoyed owning a Nikon 4500 digital camera for a few years now. It has a swivel mechanism that allows me to take pictures of myself while looking at the lcd screen, it has an optional wide angle lens I use often on tight places and overall it takes decent pictures in auto mode. But it wasn’t until a new friend from Denmark, Henrik Jønsby, showed me the tricks of the 4500 a few months ago. It has given new life to my old faithful camera.

The picture above is a prime example. My wife took the one on the left on auto mode then she passed the camera to see if I can get a good picture of it on manual mode. WOW! what a difference. I took that picture in Aperture Priority Mode which let’s me set the depth of field (or how far should the camera focus) and set it at 3.5. I changed the White Balance to outdoors since the light was coming from our front window. In automatic mode it was thinking I was indoors, that’s why the one on the left is yellowish. I set the ISO to 100 since it was daylight and adjusted the exposure to my liking. The best thing is that any change made to these settings are automatically visible, for the most part, in the screen. So as you can see, reading the manual, or becoming friends with someone that has does pay off. It’s time to find that old manual you never got to!